


All this (and love, too)

by imbellarosa



Series: Here be Dragons [2]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Sorta Kidfic, This is a story about family, but not really?, i just want them all to be happy OKAY??, mainly the whole crew shows up, past q/alice, queliot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 11:04:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18364724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imbellarosa/pseuds/imbellarosa
Summary: The night that Kady comes home to find a baby in her living room, she walks right back out of the apartment. Julia sees her from her perch on the bay window and runs after her, her bare feet slapping the wood floor and her laugh echoing down the hall.ORwe are the family that we make.





	All this (and love, too)

**Author's Note:**

> Hi okay so! there are several points to this. First of all, this is my first time writing a series or a part two, etc. But I really did like the first one and i kinda wanted to see what everyone else would have to say about the Poppy situation. 
> 
> The title is, again, from Richard Siken, and the series title is G.K Chesterson.

Poppy didn’t know how much babies cried before she had one of her own. When she had been in labor, she remembers thinking,  _ so this is what the end of the world feels like _ . And then, when she had held her little boy, the first thing she had thought was,  _ so now what _ ? 

Which, like, hindsight being 20/20 and all, was probably when she should have realized that the egg hangover had worn off. But she had never walked away from a commitment before, and she wasn’t about to start now - especially not after telling everyone how much she  _ wanted  _ this, how  _ special  _ this child was going to be. And then she had been holding him, and she had to admit that he didn’t look beautiful or special or powerful, or anything other than squirmy and pink and wrigley.  _ Kind of like a worm _ , she thought with scientific detachment.  

By the time the nurse came in to take him to do his first tests, though, she had again convinced herself that she could do this - wanted to do this. And so she had left the hospital with a child wrapped in blue blankets that she admits she hadn’t washed since that day, and she had driven back to her lab. She doesn’t even think she could produce the child’s documents if she tried. Not that it would make much of a difference: he had been born in the middle of a small country by the sea that had a lot of fascinating potential for new discoveries in her field, but not much else, by her measure. 

Then the crying started. If she’s being honest with herself - which she always tries to be - he had started crying about a month after she brought him back to the campsite. But it had been hot, and there had been very little clean water, and food was a bit scarce, so she figured it was some product of the environment that was bringing the child to tears. Hell, she had seen it bring grown men to tears - a little boy was no surprise. 

Three weeks after she delivered the baby, she realized it didn’t have a name. In her head, she’d been calling it ‘baby’. Her researchers had various nicknames for him that he would coo and babble to, but nothing that they had decided would define him. She thinks about it for a minute, then laughs. His name is Ladon. 

And then, a month and a half later, she thinks about just dropping him off. She could just - run. It’s not like she hasn’t done it before. She doesn’t  _ have  _ to call Quentin. And then she thinks about the Monster that had been running around the last time she had been in contact with him, and how maybe she couldn’t do it alone - or at all - but she does love this child in the best way she know how. She doesn’t want to put him in danger by leaving him with an ancient Monster that the gods fear. Even if she does call it Jennifer in her head. 

***

When the phone rings, Quentin hesitates before answering it. He’s always scared, these days. The last phone call he’d gotten - well, he’d broken enough after that call. Sometimes, Alice calls, just to say hi, to check in on them, maybe because they will always be a part of each other’s story, and there is a love that accompanies that. But she texts before she does. 

Julia looks at him, and then at the phone, and then she crosses the room in three strides and answers it. 

“Hello?”

“Hi,” a cheerful voice answers on the other line. “Ummm...is Quentin Coldwater around?”

“Who is this,” Julia’s voice is fierce and wary.

“Poppy! Um, Poppy Kline?”

“Oh, fuck, Q?” she calls out. “It’s just Poppy. She wants to talk to you.”

“What? Why?” His hair slips over his eyes. It’s been doing that these days.

“I don’t know. Do you want me to tell her to fuck off?”

“I can hear you, you know,” the voice calls from the receiver. And then they hear a shrill cry in the background.

“Oh my God,” Quentin buries his head in his hands. “Poppy, what’s going on?”

“It’s...it’s the baby,” she says. “He won’t stop crying. And I’ve - I’ve tried everything, Quentin. I’ve fed him, I’ve changed his diaper, I’ve played soothing dragon noises! Nothing! And - and you’re his godfather, you have to help me.”

“I...ugh,” he sighs because he knows what his answer is going to be. It might not always be what he would have done, but no parent lets a child suffer. At least, no parent worth their salt. “Yeah, okay. Bring him over. Same apartment as last time.”

He hears her take a deep breath. He thinks she’s relieved. She really shouldn’t have kept the kid, and he has a sinking suspicion that she’s not going to for much longer. 

Then, “Hey, sorry to ask, but is Jennifer still around?’

“Who?”

“Oh, um. The monster. The one in your friend’s...body? I don’t think I really got a clear picture of how that worked. I just...I can’t leave him with a literal monster, you know?”

“Don’t you work with Dragons,” Julia chimes in from the background.

“Okay, but…” and Quentin can smell an argument. 

“Alright,” he uses what Julia would call  _ a tone _ and she smirks at him when he does. “No, Poppy,  _ Jennifer _ is no longer around. Eliot’s back. Thank God. Thank  _ God _ .” 

“Okay, great!”  And, for a second, Q hates her. The worst few months of his life, and she doesn’t give a damn. She just cares that he can help her. “I’ll be there this afternoon.”

He sighs and turns to Julia. She looks at him like he’s lost his mind.

***

The night that Kady comes home to find a baby in her living room, she walks right back out of the apartment. Julia sees her from her perch on the bay window and runs after her, her bare feet slapping the wood floor and her laugh echoing down the hall. It had been a long time since Kady had heard that laugh.

“Okay,” she calls, panting and laughing still. “Okay stop. Wait.”

“What the fuck?” she says, “There’s a fucking baby in my apartment and I sure as hell know its not mine.” 

“It’s Poppy’s,” Julia explains with a little shrug.

“The crazy bitch with the stolen dragon egg?”

“Yes, except it’s not a dragon egg anymore, it’s a human baby, and it’s hers, and it was sick and she didn’t know how to take care of it, so she called Q, and he told her to bring the baby over.”

“And now they’re what? Nesting? In my apartment? What the hell is Eliot going to say about this shit?”

“He’s...surprisingly okay with this. He was the one who figured out how to break the baby’s fever, and the kid seems really attached to him?”

“ _ What the fuck? _ ” 

“I know, I know, it’s weird. And it’s - unconventional, to say the least,” she puts her hands up in a placating motion. “But it’s been a rough few years for all of us, and it might be nice to have a baby around for a bit. Just to - clear the air. To remind us all that life goes on. Or, fuck knows, maybe just to make sure the kid’s not gonna die somewhere in Central America while his mom is looking for The Next Big Thing to write her dragon porn on.”

Kady can’t help it; she laughs, too. 

***

The thing is, one week slowly turns into two, and then two into three, and suddenly it’s been two months and Poppy doesn’t seem to have any plans to go back to her lab. Or maybe she does - she’ll disappear for a few days at a time before showing up for breakfast as if nothing happened and inhaling half of the fridge. They don’t know how close she is to a breakthrough, or if she’ll ever have one; they just know that she’s like a spring breeze - here one moment and gone the next.

Poppy tells that that the little boy is named Ladon. She won’t tell them why, but she seems to think it’s  _ really clever _ . Alice rolls her eyes and sighs loudly when Q tells her in their weekly phone chat. Which, oh yeah, is apparently a thing now. 

He thinks that it started sometime after Brakebills South. It’s not that he loves her - although he does, and he always will, in different ways - it’s that they played such a huge role in each other's stories. Q was there when they tried to summon Charlie. Alice saw him break down and then build himself back up. They fell in love and then back out and then in once more. She knows his deepest, darkest secrets and he knows hers. They are irrevocably different because of each other, and it would hurt him to lose that because they don’t work in one capacity anymore.

And Alice - well, she gets it. She knows what it’s like to lose everything, and she’s human in a way that Julia struggles to be. And, yeah, it had been awkward for a while, especially after Brakebills South, but...he missed her. And so they started talking; little things, at first - she started yoga, he started running. Eliot started cooking, she’s still looking for magic pipes. Julia is getting better, and Penny finally asked her out. Alice approved of that one. And it grew from there. And so, when Q effectively adopted a child, she is the first person he tells 

outside of the people living in the apartment.

“Oh,” she says with quiet surprise. “Um...congratulations?”

“Umm,” and Q feels twenty-five again, awkward and unsure and not knowing what reaction he wanted from the woman on the other side of the line. “Yeah. Thanks. Um. We’re not really sure if she’s leaving him here with us or if she’s moving in, though, so…Um. But. Yeah.”

“What’s his name,” Alice prompts, and he’s so grateful that she’s trying to mask her pain, because it is still painful, for him, too, but his life is - good - now, and he would choose it over the one he used to want every damn time, and he couldn’t really bring himself to be sorry for it. 

“Ladon,” he says with a smile. It’s not Teddy, not his son that he created and chose and raised, but it’s a little boy with a wide smile who sticks to Eliot like glue and he loves him. “I’m kind of surprised, to be honest? I thought Poppy was going to name him after a dragon.”

And that’s when she sighs. He can imagine her exasperated face and her half smirk. Sometimes, he can’t believe that she is the same woman who was afraid of herself. There is a comfortable silence for a minute. 

“What if I can’t do this, Alice,” and he hasn’t said this aloud to anyone - not even Julia, not even Eliot. “What if I can’t be a father anymore. Or..what if I can, and Poppy leaves, and I lose him? I don’t - I can’t …”

“I was wrong, Q,” she cuts in. “You are as good as I hoped. And you are  _ way  _ better than you think.”

Silence, again. He doesn’t mind it, really. And then:

“You’re a good man, Q,” Alice says quietly. “I know that you don’t believe it, but you are. And - you’re gonna be a good father, and any child would be lucky to have you, whether or not  _ this _ one is the one that keeps you. It’s - it’s gonna be okay.”

“I - yeah,” he sighs. “But, um, how are you doing? How’s - how’s the library thing going?”

“Oh,” she answers, “It’s going. We...Kady is going to stay undercover for a bit, so I’m just - making maps right now. I don’t mind it. It gives me time to go to morning yoga classes.

“Um. Q? I just want to. I think I have to say something, and I don’t want you to say anything until I’m done, okay?”

“Alice -”

“No. Just. Listen.”

“Okay.”

“You aren’t the best thing that ever happened to me. I - I was wrong about that, too. I mean, kind of. I mean. Meeting you led me to Kady and Penny and Eliot and Margo and even Julia and  _ that _ \- this weird family shaped thing that we all have -  _ that  _ is the best thing that ever happened to me. And I...I used to be so scared of being alone. My family wasn’t like you. They were never worried about being good enough. And then Charlie, and I just…

“I had forgotten what it meant to mean something to someone and I didn’t want to lose that. And...and we got so bad Q. I - I kissed an old version of you in your body. I mean,  _ who does that _ ? And you brought me back, and then I was so evil, and I blamed you for what I did as a niffin for so long, and then I thought I could fix everything and I broke it, and I  _ still loved you _ , and do you know how fucked up that is? 

“But I just - I was wrong. About so much. And I was so scared, and I didn’t want to lose the one person that had always tried to love me. And Q? You’re gonna be a really good father.”

“I - Thank you.”

“Um. So. I - I have to go. But. I’ll talk to you next week, okay?”

“Yeah. Let me know what happens with Kady.”

“Of course. Give Eliot a hug for me. Tell him I said hi, and that I’m glad he’s better.”

“Yeah. I will. I - hey, Alice? I do love you, you know? Present tense. I’m not  _ in love  _ with you, but. Yeah.”

“I know,” she says, and he can hear the tears in her voice. “Me too. Present tense.”

***

Poppy leaves. They shouldn’t really be surprised by it, but one morning when Eliot wakes up to make the coffee, he finds her note in the kitchen.

“God  _ damn it _ ,” he practically screams.

Q, who had gone to pick Ladon up, turns his head to look at Eliot with both eyebrows raised. It has been a while since Eliot has lost his composure. 

“She’s gone,” he holds the piece of paper with bullshit explanations like  _ I was never suited for this  _ and  _ I want him to have a good family, a happy life _ . “She’s gone, and she’s not coming back.”

Quentin breathes deeply and closes his eyes.  _ Minor mendings _ , he thinks,  _ fixer of small things _ . Like a teacup. A plane. A mosaic. A heart. 

“Well,” he says finally. “She’ll probably be back when she needs us again. So. You know. Give it a couple of months.”

“She  _ left her son _ .”

“Yeah,’ he agrees and he sighs. “She did. But I think we knew she was going to when she came to us that first night. And - and it’s not okay, El. I get that. But think about who she is. She left the child in her  _ lab _ , for God’s sake. Maybe she really shouldn’t have had him in the first place. And I don’t mean - not like that, but she writes  _ dragon porn _ and  _ steals eggs _ and  _ imagine the life he would have had with her _ . And - we can do better. We know we can.”

“Proof of concept?” Eliot laughs and shakes his head.

“Yes, actually.” And he goes over and hugs him from behind, laying his head on Eliot’s shoulder. His curls are shorter now, trimmed and pristine the way they used to be. “Proof of concept.” 

“Okay,” Eliot agrees. And then, “Oh my God, Margot’s going to kill us.”

“She  _ so  _ is. She’s going to use her axes, too, you know.”

“Good thing  _ you’re  _ gonna be the one to tell her.”

“What,” Quentin laughs. “Why is it always my job?”

“Because you picked up the phone. And I have to go shopping for furniture. And I’m taking Penny with me.”

“Penny?”

“Easier than Uber,” Eliot shrugs. 

Quentin just laughs. He laughs and laughs and laughs. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Let me know if you like it; I promise I read every single comment! Come say hi at imbellarosa.tumblr.com! Thank you <3


End file.
